40 years later, X Window System is far more relevant than anyone could guess
40 years later, X Window System is far more relevant than anyone could guess
One astrophysics professor's memories of writing X11 code in the 1980s.
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X Windowing System is used in XWayland still.
X11Xorg is no longer needed. RIPX11Xorg, you served us well.Edit: Thanks to the note in the comments. I obvously meant Xorg is no longer needed, which is the widely used implementation of X11 protocol. This always confuses the hell out of me.
With Wayland, programs still can't restore their window position or size. It sure would be nice if they could get basic functionality working.
Wayland is still incomplete, but that is besides the point I was making. X is still not dead, even living within XWayland, within Wayland. X11 is just one implementation of the X Protocol and XWayland is a new implementation.
Wayland itself is functional and working, just not 100% compatible to X11. The same could be said about X11, it would be nice if they could get some basic functionality working right; but they can't, and that is why we need to replace it with something more modern and better. I think Wayland is working on a solution for restoring window position and size.
When X was created, there was no compatibility needed. Wayland on the other hand is in a different position, where it needs to innovate, make it more secure and keep as much as possible compatibility to X11, DEs and window managers. It's just unfair to just say Wayland would not have basic functionality working. It also depends on the desktop environments and GNOME is often to blame for.
It will never be compatible with X because they are different designs. X relies on a central program (server) that accepts commands from programs. It is also a mess as it was built during the 80s for 80s hardware. It was expanded over time but you can only stretch the arch so far.
Wayland doesn't have a server. You desktop talks to the hardware and then the desktop accepts connections from apps.
GNOME catching a devious stray there for no reason
That does not seem to be a stray and yes there's definitely reasons to take potshots at Gnome. They still don't support server-side decorations. Everyone is absolutely fine with them not wanting to use them in their own apps, have them draw window decorations themselves, and every other DE lets gnome apps do exactly that, but Gnome is steadfastly and pointlessly refusing to draw decorations for apps which don't want to draw their own decorations. It'd be like a hundred straight-forward lines of code for them.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to breakage you have to expect when running Gnome.
I generally speaking like most of the other things you say on lemmy, so I’m just gonna agree to disagree and move on. Have a nice day
Oh noooooooo not a single QOL feature
And Wayland accessibility is very bad.
How come?
No screen readers for one thing since they can't access other windows. You'll find that most accessibility features require access to other windows in some manner.
Is it that none exist or that none can be made? Because that's like. the main feature about Wayland.
Is it that none exist or that none can be made?
I mean they can be made but it's going to require reinventing a lot of wheels. You need access to other windows to make this (and lots of other stuff) work, period. Wayland has simply moved the burden of exposing that information to other layers. By the time this is accomplished 100% the information is going to be exposed just as much as on X11, just in a different way.
Because that's like. the main feature about Wayland.
Is it? It has always seemed like a solution looking for a problem to me. When's the last time you heard about anybody having a problem with this under X11?
In theory it can be used to do bad things. In practice it's like wearing a helmet 24/7. It sounds like a good idea and it could help in case you're in a car crash or a flower pot falls on your head... but the inconvenience makes you not seriously consider it.
My main problem with it is that they simply tossed the dead cat over the wall. You can't simply say "fuck you deal with it" and call it a day, then expect all the rest of the stack to spend a decade solving the problem you created, while you get to look shiny for solving an "issue" that nobody cared about.
My other problem is that it should have been a toggle. Let people who really need to tighten security turn this feature on and let everybody else get on with their lives. Every other isolation feature on Linux (firewalls, AppArmor, containers etc.) is fully configurable. How would it be if your firewall was non-optional and set to DENY ALL all the time? It would be crazy unusable. Yet Wayland made that "the main feature"? Ridiculous.
They can, and are being made. E.g. the state of accessibility on Gome.
Am I to understand correctly that if you are running Gtk+ apps in the Gnome compositor, you get this working, but if you are running non-Gnome compositor with Gtk+ apps, it will not work? Or is it independent of the compositor?
There's a new accessibility framework being started by a Gnome developer very recently.
Which means, best case scenario where it's perfect and other desktops buy in, it will roll out to traditional desktop users in half a decade at the earliest.
Then keep using Xorg if you need it.
I think the desktop itself does that. For instance Gnome is working on accessibility
it's opt-in, per app. Meaning unless old apps are patched and recompiled, they will be inaccessible.
Making screenshots does, too, which is why that functionality gets implemented at the compositor level. And so will screenreaders. In fact looking at my settings panel KDE does have support for Orca. Dunno how well it's working but it's not like the issue is being ignored.
that's not basic funcionality
This is undesired behavior, it should be controlled by window managers not applications
I for one want my windows tiled and tabbed
Of course apps can and do restore their window sizes. Don't spread misinformation
Programs can't set position or size of windows, period, at most they can ask and then hope they don't get ignored and it's good that way. Window management is responsibility of the compositor, not of applications.
At least KDE has support for it that's about on X11 level, a proper-proper solution is still in the pipeline. And yes you're seeing right it's been there for four years.
Explains why I was having issues with this in Gnome on my HTPC...
Ended up making a remote button shortcut to maximise and restore apps
ELI5: what does this mean for the end user? Is there any simple test I can do with both to see this?
it means that you have to manually reposition every single window, every single time. for any and all apps, by design
just another reason to use tiling window managers ;) at least mine opens my windows in the same workspace on the same output every time, if i configure it to
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
I think you mean Xorg instead of X11.
Yes, you are right. I always get tripped up with this one. Xorg is the implementation of the X11 protocol.
Yes. My bad.
Wayland kinda is an x.org project in the first place. AFAIK it's officially organised under freedesktop but the core devs are x.org people.
x.org as in the organisation and/or domain might not be needed any more, but the codebase is still maintained by exactly those Wayland devs for the sake of XWayland. Support for X11 clients isn't going to go away any time soon. XWayland is also capable of running in rootfull mode and use X window managers, if there's enough interest to continue the X.org distribution I would expect them to completely rip out the driver stack at some point and switch it over to an off the shelf minimum wayland compositor + XWayland. There's people who are willing to maintain XWayland for compatibility's sake, but all that old driver cruft, no way.
Wayland is freedesktop's project and freedesktop is Xorg's project. But you are kinda correct.
Wayland kinda is an x.org project in the first place.
Not really. Wayland is fundamentally different from Xorg. Otherwise we would not need Wayland and create X12. It's like saying mechanical hard drives are kind of Solid State Drives, just because they allow to do something similar. Even if the developers are the same, does not mean the technology is.
AFAIK it’s officially organised under freedesktop but the core devs are x.org people.
I'm not sure if this is correct. But let's assume this is correct. Why does it matter? If Wayland was developed by different people than those who maintain Xorg at the moment, would not change the fact that we need Wayland, because it is different and solves issues that cannot be solved with Xorg without rewriting it. And nobody wants to rewrite Xorg or understand the code (other than very basic security maintenance).
And nobody wants to rewrite Xorg or understand the code (other than very basic security maintenance).
That's precisely the point: All the devs got tired of it and started wayland instead.
X12 might happen at some point when wayland is mature, as in a "let's create and bless a network-transparent protocol so we might have a chance of getting rid of XWayland in 50 years" kind of move.
lol, Wayland can't even start a desktop session on my machine, whereas X11 has worked without issues since 2009 (the last time I ever had to edit xorg.conf).
Sure sounds like X11 is the one who's "dead" around here!
Dead in the sense of development.
I thought this was obvious. But I explained it for you, here you go.(Edit: I forgot to be nice. )X11 is being actively developed, last commit on xserver was 7 hours ago, and it will probably continue being worked on for a long time
We even disagree on what "dead development" means. :D ( Edit: To add a bit substance to my reply, minimal maintenance is not actively developed in my books. )
And almost all (if not all of it) is done by redhat engineers which will drop it when rhel 8 or 9 (whichever one still supports xorg) goes end of life.
Yep that'd be Wayland devs maintaining XWayland, which is part of the x.org codebase. There are no "X11 devs", they're the ones who started Wayland to get rid of that bowl of spaghetti!
It's not dead there either, although I'd make the argument that X11 as a project is "mature" or "finalized", it doesn't really need hyperactive development like the tiktok children are used to.
(There are very good arguments that a new software stack was needed, but I'd expect the result to at least do something; ATM Wayland is little more than literally a "everyone else do my work for me" project)
I argue that X11 would have hyperactive development, if we did not have Wayland (or Mir, before it turned into a Wayland compositor). There are at least two major fields that do not work perfectly and cannot be changed by simple updates, it needs rewrite from ground up: a) advanced multi-monitor handling of different kind of monitors at the same time, b) security issues related to keyloggers, as apps are not isolated. Nobody want to touch the X11 code for more than simple maintenance, no one wants to rewrite major portions or add new features.
We just need Wayland, as you already noted there are very good arguments. A complete new base with modern code and people developing for modern times and hardware just makes sense. Think about it, do you really want to have X11 going forward the next decades? It's like holding to hard drives and saying its okay, there are no problems, and writing off SSDs.
I argue that X11 would have hyperactive development, if we did not have Wayland
Wayland was started by the X developers because they were sick and tired of hysterical raisins. Noone else volunteered to take over X, either, wayland devs are thus still stuck with maintaining XWayland themselves. I'm sure that at least a portion of the people shouting "but X just needs some work" at least had a look at the codebase, but then noped out of it -- and subsequently stopped whining about the switch to Wayland.
What's been a bit disappointing is DEs getting on the wayland train so late. A lot of the kinks could have been worked out way earlier if they had given their 2ct of feedback right from the start, instead of waiting 10 years to even start thinking about migrating.
What’s been a bit disappointing is DEs getting on the wayland train so late. A lot of the kinks could have been worked out way earlier if they had given their 2ct of feedback right from the start, instead of waiting 10 years to even start thinking about migrating.
That's the real issue. And its worse with Gnome, as Gnome doesn't want support "all of" Wayland and its protocols. That means Wayland will be broken on Gnome, despite Gnome being the most used DE (at the moment). People complain about the problems in Wayland, but not all problems are caused by Wayland itself.
However there were or are two big reasons I can think of why Wayland wasn't adopted early and for some may never: a) its much harder to be Wayland conform, because the window manager/DE has to do much more work, b) Wayland was just not ready before, as many important aspects were missing (in example some basic protocols, Nvidia) or broken. I don't blame them. For the record, I am not a Wayland chill, just talking about this, because there are many misconceptions (me included, I'm not perfect) and switched to Wayland just end of last year. Before that Wayland did just not work for me. I even switched from Qtile to KDE, because KDE has probably the best Wayland support (I hate manual window management).
Edit: I just remembered another reason why Wayland wasn't probably adopted early. Canonical/Ubuntu started a Wayland alternative called Mir (that was before Mir transformed into a Wayland compositor). And devs probably didn't want set on Wayland or Mir before knowing what will be around in the future.
Think about it, do you really want to have X11 going forward the next decades?
If the alternative is a new system that literally does nothing? Sure!
Want to present a menu for windows? Wayland: "lol, do it yourself".
Want to position a window? Wayland: "lol, do it yourself".
Want to remember that a window has a position? Wayland: "lol, do it yourself".
Want to add a global keyboard shortcut? Wayland: "AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
X11 may be old and whatever you want, but it works and it's battle-tested. Wayland can't even launch a full desktop session in my machine, which is even less than the failure Pulseaudio was back in its day and that's saying something. And even if it did somehow launch, I probably would not be able to use anything serious like a media player or multiple workspaces on it.
If the alternative is a new system that literally does nothing? Sure!
You should read about Wayland. Doing nothing is absolutely wrong.
X11 may be old and whatever you want, but it works and it’s battle-tested.
It doesn't work. There are parts of X11 which are broken. And you reply to a reply where I already listed 2 huge points, which are not even the only ones. And you ignore that X11/Xorg code is totally spaghetti, huge and has lot of old code that not everyone understands, because it has ton of workarounds to make it somehow half baked working on modern times. Nobody wants to work on the code, doing more than basic maintenance. And you should think about the future too, not just about yesterday and today on your personal computer. Think bigger. X11 is just not enough anymore going forward, for the next coming decades.
Wayland can’t even launch a full desktop session in my machine, which is even less than the failure Pulseaudio was back in its day and that’s saying something.
Are you on Gnome? Did you install Wayland on top of a running X11 system and did not configure it correctly? X11 doesn't work on my machine too, because everything is Wayland configured. So whats your point? Off course one is not a 100% replacement. There will be changes, and both are incomplete and are not working 100% perfectly. The point of Wayland is not being 100% compatible with the setup you have for Xorg/X11. There are things like reading from keyboard on any application that is running is a security risk in X11. Wayland prevents that. Which in turn means that some programs (even important ones) won't work. And they are working on a solution.
I switched to Wayland just end of last year and one of the reasons is that X11 does not handle multiple monitors well, if they have different sizes and refreshrates, especially if you add G-Sync and probably FreeSync on the other monitor. X11 is broken at that front.
When was the last time you tried it, and what GPU did you use?
February this year, and the iGPU of my machine (Intel 915 driver).
That's not the norm
It was nice while it lasted (not)